C.P.D. Harris's Blog, page 34
June 23, 2016
The Rune 1.6
After much soul-searching, I have decided to write a few short stories, unrelated to the other works, before continuing on with the next of the Shadow Wolf Sagas, just to keep it fresh. As always, this is raw and uncut; enjoy responsibly.
<>
“Another one?” I asked, visions of the Groaners tearing at my flesh flashing through my head.
Amy with the gun smirked at me. “I wasn’t being serious.”
“This is very, very serious for me, Amy. I have only the vaguest idea of what is going on, and that is the first time that I have seen a Groaner. Try to appreciate why I might not find that funny.”
“Yeah, yeah, I didn’t see you complaining about my manners when I was saving your ass, buddy.”
“Yeah, speaking of that… do your bullets have runes on them?”
Amy with a gun stopped and turned to look at me, eyes narrowed. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”
“When you fired the gun, I saw the bullet go by, I saw a rune on it, I think.”
“Can you draw the rune that you saw?” Amy with a gun asked in a tone that intimated that she thought I was full of shit. As she spoke her free hand produced a small black notebook. It instantly struck me as odd when I first looked at it, but I could not place why.
“Shouldn’t we be moving away from the Groaners?”
“Yup, it is a good reason to do as I asked right quick. Draw it.”
I grabbed the notebook. It felt oddly heavy. I scribbled the rune”DEATH” in it and handed it back to Amy with the gun. She looked at it, then looked at me. It was a guarded look, one that lasted a little too long.
“Come on, we need to get going.”
I was so relieved to get moving again that I forgot that look.
June 21, 2016
Teaser Tuesday
This week we have a preview from my upcoming book, Bloodlust: The Seeds of Ruin. It is a involves the Skin Leagues, so be warned.
I am always a little uncomfortable writing sexually tinged scenes, especially those involving the Skin Leagues, a degenerate form of the Great Games where the fighters are required to bare their all for the crowds and put up with other humiliating, exploitative rules in the name of gaining popularity and fandom.
“People of Solvanar, I bring you games!” began Silvius, lifting his arms. The crowd roared lustily. “The Skyclad Leagues offers what the corrupt Faction Leagues, the boring Free Leagues, and the dreadfully unrefined Death Leagues do not. Here handsome Gladiators and delectable Gladiatrices bare all and fight hard for your pleasure! Let the games begin!”
Octavia smiled as Silvius returned. Outside the trumpets sounded and the announcer called the Gladiator forth. She leaned over the railing, watching intently through the privacy screen.
Iron Lance was a large, muscular Shadow-Elf. He was wearing a heavy battle harness, but his impressive manhood was clearly visible underneath the plate protecting his abdomen. He was well-formed, with broad shoulders and barrel chest, a thin waist, and a magnificently muscular physique. His hair was glamoured into long spikes and his skin shone as if freshly oiled.
“Does he usually go into battle so impressively… engorged, Silvius?” asked Noxaia.
“It is a League rule, actually,” said Silvius. “After a few seasons we have found that the crowds have certain expectations regarding appearances. It is part of a complex refinement process that I am very involved in.”
“Hands-on, I am sure,” said Octavia.
Silvius laughed ostentatiously, because he had to, then turned back to Chosen Noxaia.
June 19, 2016
Happy Father’s Day
First up, I need beta readers for Bloodlust: The Seeds of Ruin, if anyone is interested, leave a comment.
Secondly, as the father of a 10 month old baby boy, I am taking the night off from blogging. Here are some pictures of baby Ronan, who makes me very happy.
June 16, 2016
The Rune (1.6)
After much soul-searching, I have decided to write a few short stories, unrelated to the other works, before continuing on with the next of the Shadow Wolf Sagas, just to keep it fresh. As always, this is raw and uncut; enjoy responsibly.
<>
Huge watery eyes, grey-green flesh that looked like it was half-melted like an old candle, and a gaping, triangular maw characterized the creatures that I saw before me. They teach us that Groaners are just degenerate men, driven mad by toxins or bestial by lack of order, but I could hardly credit that as they swarmed over the heap of ruined flesh that was one of their number.
Amy with the mohawk held her enormous gun leveled at the Groaners, but made no further move, save to check the tunnel behind us.
The closest Groaner met my eyes. It was like looking into deep, murky water. The maw yawned open and it hissed at me, revealing a freakishly large gullet full of glistening serrated teeth. Then it began to scramble forward, the others hissing in its wake.
“Fuck.”
I felt Amy with the mohawk`s gun fire again. Saw the word ‘DEATH’ flash down the hall, hit the charging Groaner and flow into the corpse as the bullet blew through it, splattering thick blackish blood all over its comrades. The word became part the Groaner somehow, killing it with a finality that seemed to overshadow the bullet.
The Groaners behind stopped, hissing at us, and then swarmed onto their dead packmate, ripping at the flesh, biting great chunks out of the flesh. Some of them began to feast on the first Groaner as well.
“Groaners are reasonable when it comes down to it,” said Amy with the mohawk as we backed away. “If there is enough food to go around, they won’t bother to chase you. Let’s get the fuck out of here, chum. It is a long walk to the safe zone and I would never hear the end of it if I lost another one to Groaners.”
June 14, 2016
Teaser Tuesday
This week’s Teaser is from Bloodlust: Red Glory (Domains of the Chosen #4)
Throughout the series thus far, there has been a vein of conspiracy, starting with Valaran’s cheating in the first two books. In Red Glory we see all sorts of underhanded actions come to light, one detail that might seem trivial, but that appears in all of the books except the first, is strange runes that seem to appear on some Gladiator’s weapons (Karmal has these in book 2 when she fights Sadira. In the upcoming Seeds of Ruin the purpose of these runes is revealed. Red Glory, however, details how they appear.
It was all done right under the noses of the Grey-Robes: Scarmaker’s benefactor sent him another letter, telling him where and when to meet as well as what to tell the officers of the Deliberative who would be escorting him.
For a moment he wondered if it was a trap, but the actions he was being asked to take could not be seen as traitorous. Even if it was discovered, he could easily feign ignorance.
So Scarmaker went out into the city of Krass, stopping at a shop called Baret’s Blades, where he gave his weapons to a young smith to examine while the Grey Robes looked on.
The smith was not even a vassal, but Scarmaker still had to admire his work. He ran a whetstone across the edges of the blade, and oiled the metal. The young man checked the grip and tested all of the runes with a channelling rod. It took about half an hour before he was satisfied.
“These look fine,” said the young Smith. “However, I think you should return tomorrow before your match and let my master examine the edging on the major runes. He has a special carving technique that can enhance the power of the rune by as much as two percent in a small period of time.”
“Of course,” said Scarmaker, taking back the weapons that the smith handed to him.
The Grey Robes escorting him never realized that Scarmaker had left his actual knives behind and that the ones he carried were merely very convincing fakes, runes and all.
June 12, 2016
Review: Total War Warhammer – A good time to Waaaaaaaaaagh!
As I close in on the last few re-writes of Bloodlust: The Seeds of Ruin I have encountered a formidable obstacle; I am positively addicted to Total War: Warhammer.
The Total War series is well known among fans of computer wargames and Total War: Warhammer is Creative Assemblies first foray into a non-historical setting. After two less than stellar releases in Rome 2 and Attila (I pre-ordered Rome2, oops) the boys at CA really must have felt the need to knock this one out of the park, and they did.
Let’s start with the negatives, just for fun.
Pre-Order DLC: CA managed to cause a stir with the news that The Chaos Faction was going to be available for free to people who pre-ordered. This was widely seen as a dick move, in an industry where consumers are constantly being milked. Eventually they reneged and made Chaos available for free during week 1, but it still left some feeling sour.
My biggest complaint about the game is the dominance of elite and special units. In the tabletop game even the most impressive armies had to field some grunts due to army structure. In Total War: Warhammer you really want to pack as much punch into each army as possible and the main limitation is the 20 unit/army max (although you can have multiple armies, I feel the cost increase still pushes you toward stacking elites).
In previous Total War games and some editions of Warhammer, units had better use of formations and special moves. I would like to have seen shield walls on certain units and grape-shots on cannons (the level of unit abilities in TW: Napoleon would be perfect IMO) for example.
You cannot customize your regular troops colour or kit.
Here are some features that I feel are neutral, some people will love them, others will hate them.
Heroes can be very, very powerful. Some people like this, some hate it. It was the same with some iterations of the tabletop. They definitely have impact on both playstyle and in combat.
As per usual in TW, the AI can skirmish like crazy. I found it irritating to fight Chaos horse missile troops, and just ended up auto-resolving against the armies of the North most of the time in my Chaos campaigns. The AI in general is better than the last couple of TW games, but still predictable.
Some people feel the diplomacy and city management are too bare-bones. I’m ok with them for the most part.
The battlefields are fairly open for the most part. I have seen some unusual fields, but not a lot of terrain cheese.
TW agents can be annoyingly OP.
And finally the positives.
Fun battles that are just great to watch, especially on a PC that can handle the largest unit sizes. The level of detail just zooming in on the battles is staggering.
Each faction has a unique play style, both on and off the fields of battle and unit roster. While some of these choices do not see play, especially later in the campaign or in competitive multiplayer, there is enough variety in late-game units to create interesting armies.
Dwarves, for example, lack cavalry, magic, and monstrous units but have tremendous ranged units and artillery while the Vampire counts have a lot of awesome cannon fodder, fast monstrous troops , and fearsome elites but really lacking in missile weapons and artillery.
Multiplayer campaign coop: I cannot emphasize how much I love this feature. I can play a campaign head to head or with another player against the AI. Games you can play cooperatively are just awesome.
Most of the battles are fun, especially once you get a decent variety of units. Some of them are just incredible.
Quest battles in the campaign are very enjoyable for the most part, with some of them presenting interesting tactical challenges balanced for a single army.
The map feels just big enough.
CA will be adding the full faction roster from 8th edition, including some for free.
Magic feels just right. Sometimes it is crazy strong, sometimes it just does not get you there, just like in the tabletop.
While the unit abilities are limited, the depth of tactics on the field is still there, once you get use to it.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
As a whole, I love the game. I have played orcs, dwarves, and Chaos in depth so far and dabbled in empire and vampire counts. I am already drooling over bretonnia, wood elves and beastmen getting added in. It might not have grapeshot, but hey, maybe I can make a mod for that.
June 9, 2016
The Rune (1.5)
After much soul-searching, I have decided to write a few short stories, unrelated to the other works, before continuing on with the next of the Shadow Wolf Sagas, just to keep it fresh. As always, this is raw and uncut; enjoy responsibly.
<>
Everything seemed to happen at once. Amy with the mohawk leveled her gun. I ducked. Then gun went boom, a sound that erased all others, making my eardrums scream. I felt the hot flash of the reaction spilling from the muzzle of the weapon… and something else. I saw the word ‘death’, written in runic, and felt it too, as the bullet whizzed by incomprehensibly fast. It was like there was two of me, one, the normal guy who can’t read the side of a bullet, and another tucked away inside to whom that tiny fraction of a fraction of a second was just not that much of an obstacle to a good read.
It was intense, like orgasm or eureka, one of those moments so singular that everything else seems to melt away so you can focus. I would not soon forget it.
The bullet with the word flew over my shoulder. I was far to slow to see the impact, and yet somehow I could trace the path of the projectile as if I was riding it. Then it hit something, there was a screech, and the word ‘death’ became ‘DEATH’, a sentence invoked and executed.
My focus faded. Amy with the mohawk stepped past me, snarling, gun still raised. I turned and saw my first Groaner.
June 7, 2016
Teaser Tuesday
This week’s teaser if from my Blade Breaker, the first book from my newest series, The Shadow Wolf Sagas.
This is the introduction. I spent far more time polishing this section of writing than I did with the counterpart in Bloodlust: A Gladiator’s tale. While I am proud of how it flows and invokes Ragnar’s character, I still think I can do better.
My focus here is in avoiding the use of ‘I’ statements and trying to convey character through simple actions. I wonder though if it would have been better, in both cases, to start with an action scene.
You be the judge.
The wolf dream again. Snapping awake, heart drumming, with that mournful howl ringing clear and close, and my hand twitching toward my weapons. There was no rush of feet, no blade descending in the dark, only familiar silk sheets and warm bodies. Listening intently, my ears drank in all of the sounds of the old stone house and the streets outside.
The noises that now came to my ears were as familiar as my own breath; quiet, throaty laughter and the clink of glass from a late night revel at the Royal Red, a winehouse three houses down. Beyond that, the jingle of metal rings and the thud of booted feet announced a pair of the city watch rounding the corner at the end of the street. Beside me, my housemates, the women called The Twins were deep in sleep’s rhythms, undisturbed.
There were other ways of detecting threats; my sense of smell is nearly as keen as that a wolf. The heady scents of perfume and my bedmates filled the room, with undertones of weapon oil, leather, and expensive, fragrant wood. In contrast, the air coming through the armoured shutters was surprisingly pure, as clear and crisp as ever it was in Myrrhn, with only a hint of smoke and nightsoil, not yet congested with the morning fog. The most dangerous scent that caught my nose was that of a sewer viper stalking rats, but it was too faint to be anywhere near.
Without any unusual noise, nor any scent out of place, my sense of alarm faded.
The wolf dream has always been a call to action in my life, perilous to ignore. It heralded many important events, and once even spoke of my death. In Nordan Lands, the sound of wolves, calling to each other as they ran down their prey, was as commonplace as morning birdsong. Some men read fortunes in those calls, as the old Archaens claimed to read the entrails of birds. The dream could not be ignored; something was afoot, but what could the Lord of the Black Wolves want from a disgraced exile like myself?
As my thoughts began to drift Eiskra shifted, making a soft sound burrowing under my arm. Her skin was warm and silken smooth, and her scent both familiar and divine.
“Sleep, old wolf,” she whispered before her breathing took on a steady rhythm once more. Her words and touch put me at ease, and sleep one again took hold.
<>
I dreamed of wolves again, of course, and demons in the shape of wolves. I hunted with them once more, adding my voice to their song.
June 5, 2016
RPG Building: Runepunk #4 (Dice Mechanics 2)
This is a continuation of last week’s post, which sets out my goals for a dice mechanic for a homebrew RPG system to replace Shadowrun 5th for one of my larger and less experienced gaming groups.
I like 3-4 dice because it gives me a predictable bell curve. This won’t matter at all for most of the players, but it does help me set difficulties as a game master. A few of the more advanced players will also grok to that as well.
I love exploding dice, but they work less well with multi die systems. The solution I have used in the past is to roll a different sized die for the exploding die. A different colour of die would work too, but it has the potential to be confusing.
So I will go with that system which uses 3d6 +d8 added together. This gives me a range of 4 to 26 with an average weighted exactly to 15, which is an easy difficulty number. I have used this dice set in the past with good success. I called the d8 the Chaos die.
Roll 3d6 and add a d8
On a roll of 8 on the Chaos die take another d8, roll and add it
Keep rolling. In older versions of Chaos die I just assigned a big bonus to a roll of 8. Open ending more is more fun! The rule is stop once the highest level of success has been achieved.
The standard mechanic for a roll and add system is to set a variable difficulty. The more difficult the action, the higher the target number. I used to do it this way, but having a set target number and rolling difficulty into a modifier for the die roll, might be a way to squeeze more efficiency out the system. It will certainly let the player know how well they did without my input.
Old way: roll + modifiers vs difficulty
New way: roll + modifiers (difficulty included) vs set TN
Thus in this version a 15 is the TN for a basic success. Additional levels of success would be 20, 30, and 50+ for argument’s sake.
Difficulties would be +5 (easy), +3 (routine), +0 (Standard), -3 (Hard), -5 (Harder), -10 (Extremely Hard), -15 (Heroic), -20 (Epic), -25 (Legendary), -30 (Mythical)
This relegates difficulty to another roll modifier. It does lose some levels of precision in choosing a base difficulty and then stacking modifiers onto it like some games might, but that is a degree of precision that is only useful for tournaments and organized play with experienced players; I am willing to lose it for Runepunk.
Opposed rolls would simply be based on whoever rolls higher, with the level of success of the action added to the reaction as a modifier.
Now what about critical failure and open ending down.
I do like the idea of critical failure, though mostly as a gauge of how screwed minions are when they make bad rolls. I’ll set it at 5 or less, which would be pretty unlikely without a big penalty.
With the old Chaos die system I used to have a roll of 1 on the d8 open end downward. This was both complicated and not fun when it happened to a player. Instead with this system, if a player rolls a 1 on the Chaos die they cannot use re-rolls.
The final product looks like this:
3d6 + d8 (open ended) +/- modifiers (including difficulty) vs 15
Not bad for now[image error]
June 2, 2016
The Rune (1.4)
After much soul-searching, I have decided to write a few short stories, unrelated to the other works, before continuing on with the next of the Shadow Wolf Sagas, just to keep it fresh. As always, this is raw and uncut; enjoy responsibly.
<>
“So, what your name?”
“I don’t do names, not like this,” said the girl with the Mohawk and the rather impressive looking runed hand cannon.
“Can I ask where you are taking me?”
“Do you know where you are?”
The walls of the passage we were in were solid concrete, solid on nondescript. It was large enough to be an underground roadway of some sort, but I saw no sign of vehicles, only smaller tunnels at irregular intervals. One of the side passages that I could see had stairs. leading up.
“We’re underground.”
“You’re a fucking genius, you are,” said my guide, rolling her eyes. “I’m taking you to meet the people who decide if you get to live or die.”
That pissed me off. I stopped moving and turned to face her. She smirked and looked me in the eye, the barrel of her gun resting on her shoulder. There was a cold frankness to her gaze. I crossed my arms and held my ground, waiting for her to speak.
She sighed.
“My name is Amy,” she said. “This is an old bunker from the Beforetime. We’re not sure if it is military or corperate, but it has been abandoned, by people at least, for a long time. It was built to last though. The closest city is Chalpit.”
Chalpit was halfway across the country from home, although I did not know the location of the prison where I was being kept. How far had that Rune taken me?
“Uh, Amy, my name is Jon.”
“Please to meet ya, Jonny,” she said. The cold look was gone. “Listen, fella. I was serious about groaners. We cleared most of them out when we moved in here, but they keep coming back.”
“Wait, who is we?”
“The Carvers.”
The Carvers were terrorists of the highest order. But, then again, people who knew how to use runes were dissonants, so it made sense that the powers that be would want to paint a bad picture of any organization that sought to free them.
“What do the Carvers want with me?”
“Fuck,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Why do the cute ones have to be so wordy? Listen, Jonny Boy, we have a long way to go, walk with me and I will explain–“
Her mouth cut off mid sentence, the ‘nnnnn’ sound becoming a snarl as she leveled her gun at me. The movement was so swift I was still watching her red lips move as the big black barrel appeared in my line of vision.
“Duck.” she said.
And the gun went boom.
